Yesterday morning Clara began systematically removing balls from the ball pit and placing them in various kitchen accouterments.

Later in the day, at her birthday party at her aunt’s house, she did this:

Remember Richard Dreyfuss’s character and his obsession with Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Dreyfuss’s character spent hours creating models of a mountain that he had never seen before, in potting soil, clay and most famously, mashed potatoes. Until he saw an image of the mountain on a news broadcast, he had no idea what he was doing or why.

For those of you not familiar with the film, Devil’s Mountain was the ultimate landing site of the alien spaceship.

Clara’s behavior with the balls and the pretzels reminded me of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Inexplicable, seemingly obsessive, varying in medium, and yet somehow somehow methodical and with a sense of order and purpose as well.

Maybe it’s a sign?

My wife, who is afraid of aliens and even the thought of them, will not be happy to hear my suppositions.